Mr. John Curtis:

I think we can get the supports in place. Sometimes it is just about putting the emphasis on something. We need to put the emphasis on STEM nationally, through Oide or CPD, and get the guidance counsellors to engage more in that space for us. They are key and crucial. I am not that worried about getting the information to them or prompting them to get into the sphere. There is good documentation there and good research.

The STEM education report of 2020 shows that things are changing at school level, that more and more girls especially are taking up the STEM subjects. As I said, we need to recalibrate at a school level. This is a prompt for us to talk to our schools and the Department about getting a new impetus for this. An awful lot of it is about time. People have aptitudes at school level. When someone is at school at 12 or 13 years of age, who spots their aptitude? Who can say to them that they might be good in a certain sphere? They need somebody like a guidance counsellor, someone with a little bit of time who is not too tied up in teaching. We have an endemic problem in second level education at the moment and there is no easy answer to it. We cannot decrease the pupil-teacher ratio because we do not have the teachers to fill the gaps but over time we need to come up with a systemic approach whereby we need to change the pupil-teacher ratio. We have done some work on it in primary schools. If we do that in a planned manner, it will help in a number of spheres. It will help with the STEM subjects and it will allow us to have a few more guidance teachers in the schools. It is about the time, or even principals. It is about the resources in school that allow the leaders in schools and the guidance counsellors to talk to the children about their strengths and weaknesses, about the possibilities and the new possibilities that are emerging in areas such as STEM.